Jess Sparke 7th in Edinburgh

Jess Sparke finished a marvellous 7th in the Women's Bupa Great Edinburgh International Cross event (televised live on BBC1) today. Looking confident after her bronze in the European U23 Championship in Dublin in mid-December, Jess spent much of the race in the lead group that included World CC champion Tirunesh Dibaba, World 5,000m champion Vivian Cheruiyot, European CC champion Hayley Yelling and Olympian Steph Twell. She was finally broken with around 1 mile of the 5.8K remaining, but hung on well enough to finish around 10 seconds behind Yelling and Twell as Dibaba was a clear winner.

Amongst the athletes Jess beat were Freya Murray, who was 9th in the European senior CC championship, and World 1500m silver medallist Lisa Dobriskey.